Philippine Education Landscape

Oca outlines the pressing challenges in Philippine higher education — from regulatory barriers and teacher training gaps to low graduation and employment outcomes — while pointing to opportunities in technology, a young population, and the moral role of universities in driving equity and progress.

Well, the challenge is sometimes government is not as encouraging for for institutions that really want to move forward very fast. So there's a lot of regulations, that you follow. And sometimes policies are not very clear or sometimes they're inconsistent. So, so some better will may be better relationships with the government and, or, a stronger sense of communication and, dialog with government, I think would be very helpful.

Second, the access to quality education, especially for teacher training in higher education, again, was mentioned that there are many teachers too, in especially in the provinces who do not have graduate studies. And, and and then they have to teach higher education institutions. So, so that's one the low graduation rate, I think is very important to address.

Many students start but then do not graduate, they do not finish their degree. And lastly, that those that graduate do not find jobs. It's very small percentage of those who have a college degree find really good jobs. I think the opportunities is that because of the pandemic, we were able to use technology. And so the use of technology is already there.

The only thing is that many schools or high do not have the resources to improve the infrastructure. But at least they're open to technology. Before the pandemic, there was still a debate that, you know, we should not use technology. Technology is not efficient. And then also a, so, so we can use hybrid hybrid learning, online distance learning.

Also, I think an opportunity is a great majority of the population is 25 years old and younger. So, that's a big amount of, students that can go through college and be trained or maybe not even go to college, but get some form of training to be, useful and productive citizens in our country. So unlike other countries, like Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South South Korea, the numbers are going down.

And so, so, so for, for us, it's a great opportunity to, to have so many young people.